Yanina Settembrino coordinator of the Rural Federation for Production and Planting for Argentina talking with rural farm workers. Photo: Gisela Volá/Agencia Tierra Viva.
By Camila Parodi – June 11, 2024
The struggle for the protection of the environment and the rights of rural communities in Argentina is intensifying in the face of government policies that threaten to dismantle advances in food and territorial sovereignty. Yanina Settembrino, Coordinator of the Federation for Production and Planting for Argentina warns about the impacts of the current political landscape on the countryside that feeds the country.
“The Bases Law is anti-national production. They don’t want a producing country, they want Argentina to be a tax haven and a financial cave,” says Settembrino, former Undersecretary of Family Agriculture and Territorial Development of the National Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries. Today, she continues her commitment to the peasant struggle by coordinating the Federation for Production and Planting for Argentina , a trade union tool for the organization and mobilization of rural sectors throughout the country.
The Rural Federation groups more than 30,000 agricultural producers organized in cooperatives and productive units. With a presence in 19 provinces of the country, they carry out comprehensive cooperative work. “For us, we have to work on two key issues: production and roots,” Settembrino explains. For the sociologist and social activist, all the people who work in the countryside must dispute “the real economy, commercialization and production of inputs” and for this – she assures – it is crucial to form a union that recognizes rural work and defends their rights.
The organization is made up of families of horticulturists, fruit growers, beekeepers, livestock breeders, farmers, dairy farmers and artisanal fishermen. From this diversity of production, they intend to “promote the development of an economic and trade union force that will enable them to dispute part of the market” through integration and participation in “all of the production chains from the beginning to the end”. “We want to talk to society about the importance of national food production, who is doing it, and the danger we are facing,” Settembrino says in reference management of Javier Milei’s government and the impact on rural producers.
In a context of climate and food crisis, the defense of peasant organizations becomes an urgent priority to guarantee food sovereignty and the care of our common goods. According to Settembrino, “it is time to continue building the economy, the life and the world we want for our families and the country.”
“If there is something we learned from the last four years, it is that if we do not move forward, we go backwards. Trade union organizations have a central role in the Argentina we dream of, where work, production and food are not the privilege of a few, but a collective right for all our people,” assures the social leader.
“The trade union organizations have a central role in the Argentina we dream of, where work, production and food are not the privilege of a few, but a collective right for all our people.”
The crisis in the Argentine countryside, that which feeds a large part of the population, is deepening in the face of adjustment policies that advance against the rights of the working class and privatize natural resources. “Small and medium-sized producers have been in an emergency for some time now, but in the last few months this situation has accelerated violently,” denounces the activist.
“With a lot of effort, farming families are sustaining their productive activity, either by decapitalizing themselves through the sale of their machinery, getting into debt or increasing their working hours.” Settembrino warns that “more and more tenant families are abandoning the productive unit.” The devaluation of the national economy, the dollarization of farm inputs and the “indiscriminate and uncontrolled increase in land rents” are a combination that is suffocating small producers.
In this process of economic recession – it is known – women, dissidents and children are the most affected by the crisis. For Settembrino, this situation is even stronger in rural areas: “Rural women participate in all strata, in all production chains, in all agricultural activities. However, this is not reflected either in our property rights or in our income.” For this reason, the social leader considers that it is essential to end the invisibility of rural women and promote “access to machinery, credit and land to close this gap.”
In addition to the economic crisis that directly impacts the daily lives of women and families working on the land, recent cuts in rural policies also negatively affect peasant production. Among them, the closure and dismantling of programs and institutions such as the Secretariat of Family Agriculture, the Family Agriculture Directorate of SENASA (National Service for Agri-Food Health and Quality) and the ProHuerta program. For Settembrino, this implies a drastic reduction in their access to technical assistance, credit and infrastructure development.
“Through the closure of programs and the dismissal of technicians who were daily in the territories, the State is even more focused on a centralist vision,” said the coordinator of the Rural Federation, who believes that, in this way, regional economies and the production of healthy food are weakened. “This also has to do with the need to put an end to a political and cultural tradition that has more than 150 years in Argentine agriculture. Today, all the rural roots are being attacked,” she emphasizes
For Yanina Settembrino, it is not only a matter of cutting rural policies but of an organized dismemberment to put an end to this tradition: “That is why they close the Argentine Post Office, as well as all the State agencies in the small towns, they put an end to public works and they cut the school canteens of the rural schools. It is all related,” she denounces and adds, ”They are forcing families to leave the countryside and go to the suburbs of the cities. The government has a systematic plan to displace rural families.”
This action denounced by the Rural Federation is not innocent. A large part of the policies promoted during these first six months of Javier Milei’s government seek the expansion of the agricultural and fossil frontier, and therefore, the need to restrict the defenders of the territory. “We are not only the ones who produce food, but we are also witnesses of the attack and abuse that exists on our territories,” Settembrino stated. According to the referent, “rural workers are not only committed to the production of food and export products, they also fulfill other roles such as the defense of territorial sovereignty, the care of the environment and the development of regional economies.”
“They are forcing families to leave the countryside and go to the problems of the cities. This government has a systematic plan to displace rural families.”
Within this framework, the measures promoted by the National Executive are of concern to all rural organizations and socio-environmental assemblies in the country. Both DNU 70/2023 and the Law of Bases grant powers to the President to modify the functions of agencies such as National Parks and ACUMAR, as well as to decide on trust funds for environmental protection, affecting laws such as Native Forest and Fire Management. These measures, together with the creation of a regime of incentives for extractive investments and the relaxation of laws for the exploitation of hydrocarbons, represent a serious setback for the rights of nature.
Although the Law of Bases still awaits treatment in the Senate, the text approved in the Chamber of Deputies allows us to understand the main objective of the national government, as well as that of a large part of the provincial governments, including some of the opposition: to benefit and grant the common goods to the large transnationals and their extractivist projects. “The Bases Law allows large corporations, national or foreign, to have access to a regime of evasion, laundering and immense tax benefits. It does not benefit any producing sector, not even the agricultural sector,” explained the activist.
In the Independent Producers of Piray, cassava, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, peanuts grow in the hectares recovered by 70 producing families. They do it without pesticides and recovering biodiversity, they produce healthy food while waiting for the government of Misiones to comply with the law and hand over all the land expropriated from the foreign forestry company Arauco.
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For this reason, for the coordinator of the Federación Rural para la Producción y Arraigo por la Argentina, any climatic catastrophe has an unequal impact on the countryside: “In a system of exclusion, any social or climatic phenomenon always affects much more those who are outside the hierarchies of that system.” From her experience alongside male and female producers of the land, climate change is here to stay. “We see its impact more and more often, not only because climate cycles have been modified and, consequently, all sowing and harvesting cycles have changed, but also because of the catastrophes generated in our production methods that is all about maximizing profits,” assures.
In view of this scenario, the lack of public works and planning by the State will make life in the countryside increasingly difficult for those who, paradoxically, take care of the land. “The previous cycle of droughts caused some of our colleagues to settle in areas that are now floodable, so they are at risk of continuing their production. Without adaptation and mitigation processes it is going to be very difficult for the sector to recover.”
“Without climate change adaptation and mitigation processes it will be very difficult for the rural sector to recover.”
Despite all the economic, political and climatic impediments that rural organizations are going through, Settembrino maintains that “farming families continue to be the main producers of food for the domestic market, not only for small towns and intermediate cities, but also for large cities in Argentina.” For example, she explained that “the horticultural belt of La Plata, in the province of Buenos Aires, supplies more than 10 million people.”
“Family farming is the main agricultural job-creating activity in Argentina and generates more than 70% of the work for rural women. For this reason, access to and permanence on the land are a central point of our struggle”, Settembrino assures. Finally, the activist underlines the key role of rural families in the defense of our common home where, in the face of the climate crisis, agroecology continues to be their bet by, “Taking care of the soil, the efficient use of water and the development of our own inputs with a national imprint, is our strategy to protect life,” she concludes.
